History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Coming Soon: Conceits of Whim and Fancy!

| June 21, 2022

My newest collection, Conceits of Whim and Fancy, is coming soon! This collection is filled with fantasy stories and poetry, with witches, familiars, faeries, skeletal warriors, a dragon or two, goblins, liches, and much, much more. Fairy tales you’ve never read, magic workers young and old, and a few characters who defy description—all these and […]

Avatar of Freya Out Today!

| March 15, 2022

Today’s the day! Avatar of Freya is now live! If you pre-ordered it (THANK YOU!), you should already have it on your device. If not, you can grab a copy for yourself here! It’s an honor to be chosen as the avatar of a god, raised to the ranks of superheroes in Cobalt City by their […]

February 2022 Publications!

| March 10, 2022

I had three new pieces out in February, all different sorts and lengths! “Promises Made” was accepted for the Glittery Literary Anthology Four and appeared early in the month. It’s an urban fantasy microfiction story about curses and promises related to the fae. The second one was one of the longest titled stories I’ve had […]

January 2022 Publications

| February 10, 2022

Already this year, I’ve had five things published–four stories and a poem! “Good to the Last Drop” is a microfiction piece that appeared in the January issue of The Antihumanist. It’s a darkly humorous story about coffee and space travel. My poem, “Slime, or Primordial Ooze?” was published in the January issue of Star*Line. This […]

Looking at Technology in Fiction through a Different Lens

| February 7, 2022

It’s always interesting to look at the ways in which technology in fiction impacts the stories we tell. This 1986 essay by Ursula K. LeGuin posits the idea that bags, or storage containers in general, are a more significant part of technological advances than most people think, and that by focusing fiction in that direction, […]

My 2022 Goals!

| January 5, 2022

2021 continued in the trend of challenging years, and while I can hope that 2022 will turn things around, I think I’ve gotten into the habit of expecting each year to be a challenge, so that I can be pleasantly surprised if it’s not. I haven’t had a lot of of luck with getting novels […]

Love in What If I’m a Merfolk?

| December 16, 2021

Some of the poetry in What If I’m a Merfolk? revolves around love among the merfolk, or love between a merfolk and a human. While merfolk and humans are often antagonistic toward each other, that isn’t always the case. My short story, “Catch,” is one example of this, telling the tale of a young woman and […]

My November 2021 Publications

| December 9, 2021

I only had a couple of new stories out in November, far fewer than the abundance of October! My flash fiction piece, “There Is No ‘I’ in Heavenly Host,” came out in Friends Journal at the beginning of the month. This was for their special speculative fiction issue, and I got the idea for it […]

New Publications in October 2021

| November 4, 2021

October was a BUSY month for new publications for me, with stories out throughout the entire month, plus one poem! “Just Smile,” a flash piece, was my first publication of the month at The Dread Machine. It’s a yokai story, this one about the hari onago. If you’ve heard of this yokai before, you’ll understand […]

September 2021 Story and Poetry Releases

| October 7, 2021

I had two new pieces come out in September. First, my poem “The Turn of the Seasons” was published in Sylvia Magazine. This poem is a double acrostic poem–it’s easy to notice the letters spelling out summer and winter at the beginning of the lines, but the last letter of each line also spells out autumn […]